


Rebuilding and Regrets

by Rosehip



Series: Ceilidh Tabris: Otherwise [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 17:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17125463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosehip/pseuds/Rosehip
Summary: Zevran and Ceilidh are settling into "normal life" after the blight. Things are still a mess, but they have eachother.





	Rebuilding and Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> This is another ficlet that began as a tumblr ask. The question was, who is my Warden's favorite DA character, and does she wish anything had gone differently? (Plenty, but it's complicated.)

The palace at Denerim hadn’t _completely_ burned down during the final battle of the blight, but the repairs would take years. It had been just over a week. The rooms Alistair had granted to Ceilidh were small and smelled of smoke. And yet, they were some of the coziest and driest available. Fire and fighting had exploded every window, crumpled every door, and torched every stick of furniture, so Ceilidh had angled to have some of her neighbors hired as repairmen and carpenters. Alistair had readily gone along, and now half the palace’s hastily-assembled staff came from what remained of the alienage.

Ceilidh’s rooms boasted sturdy, new shutters to keep the cold air out, but the mattress on the floor and a few pelts around the fireplace were the only bedroom furniture. She and Zevran used the empty front parlor for sparring. He liked to joke that they may as well have continued to camp.

At night, though, they had the rooms to themselves. Privacy, dark, walls, a better bed than the pile of blankets they’d had while traveling… they both knew they had it better than many, at the moment. In the early night, silence fell around them as the vast majority fell into exhausted sleep.

“Do you know,” Ceilidh draped herself across Zevran and planted a kiss on his topmost face-swish, “That you are my favorite person?”

He grinned at her. “Is that so? Whoever could have expected you would someday say such a thing?”

“You, for one. I was not born yesterday, you know.” she tapped a finger on his nose with mock severity. “You were angling right away to get into my good graces, not that I mind.”

“Your ‘good graces’ were not precisely the location I was angling for, my Warden. Unless that was a metaphor?”

“So, you being overwhelmed by walking skeletons while defending me was an elaborate seduction attempt?”

“Not even my _most_ elaborate, by far! But it might have seemed so to you, since yours run more towards inviting me to your tent. Very subtle.” He leaned up to kiss her.

“Mmm. Yes, well, you moved in, so it worked, didn’t it? You know, I think… we’ve had as close to a fairy tale ending as anybody ever gets? Certainly more than people like us usually get. If the ballads about us were honest, they’d have titles like ‘The time a random group of weirdos walked across Ferelden six times to save it’ or 'The great romance of thank-the-gods-there’s-at-least-one-other-elf.’ We did good.”

Zevran’s brows gathered as they often did when he was thinking. “Is there anything you’d rather have turned out differently than it did?”

“Well that’s always a fun question.” She sighed, and stared off into a dark corner, rather than meet his gaze. “But where does it end? I’d say I wished I’d moved to Highever instead of… the other way around. But then I wouldn’t have been here when I was needed. I wouldn’t have met you.” And if someone else had been in Ceilidh’s place, would they have spared Zev? Ceilidh shivered to think about it and hugged him tighter. “Who’s to say the problems in the alienage wouldn’t have started another way? Knowing Vaughan, they would have. I wish we’d had a few more Wardens to help out. I wish … you know, I basically wish noble humans weren’t so shitty. That is just always a problem. But I think… I can’t regret my part in it. I really wish my mom were here to see it, is all. She’d have been amazed. And she’d have loved you.”

Zevran’s tone brightened with a thread of mockery. “Indeed? As much as your father?”

“Meh, he’ll adjust.”


End file.
